Standing Out: A Podcast About Sales, Marketing and Leadership
Standing Out is a show created to help individuals and companies improve their sales & marketing outcomes, as well as their leadership development. Each episode we have an expert who has a unique perspective on sales, marketing and/or leadership providing insights from his or her experiences. And we throw in a few laughs from time to time. Be sure to hit Subscribe wherever you listen to our podcasts.
Standing Out: A Podcast About Sales, Marketing and Leadership
Standing Out with Will Jenkins: The Power of AI and Embracing Discomfort
Join us as we chat with Will Jenkins, the forward-thinking CEO and founder of Journey, who is pushing the boundaries of how sales professionals prepare and succeed. We dive into the essence of effective sales leadership, discussing how connecting with and inspiring people, clear communication, and proficient selling skills are pivotal in building powerful sales teams and driving organizational success.
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://success.spi3pl.com/
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
What's up everybody and welcome back to another episode of Standing Out, a podcast about sales, marketing and leadership. Excited to have you with us today. I'm Trey Griggs, your host. And also just a shout out to our friends over at Wreaths Across America. We're so excited to be a part of their organization as a part of their Trucking Tuesday lineup. So if you're listening to us on the Trucking Tuesday lineup, thanks so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1:If you're not familiar with Wreaths Across America, go and check them out right now. Wreathsacrossamericaorg. You can sponsor a wreath. You can sign up your team to participate in their annual event, which happens every mid-December, of placing wreaths on the tombstones of veterans. It's a great way to remember the past and to teach the future generations. So, again, check them out at wreathsacrossamericaorg and sign up today. Let them know. You heard about it right here on standing out. In fact, I think we have. We might have a link that goes directly to our page where we are one of our sponsors, so make sure you check that out. Click reads across Americaorgorg. Forward slash standing out and makea donation today to sponsor a wreath.
Speaker 1:Also want to take a moment and give a shout out to our sponsor, spi logistics, so excited to have them as a part of our show. Listen, if you're a freight broker and you're tired of just managing all the back office stuff or maybe you're a freight agent and you're just not happy with where you are check these guys out. They got the technology systems and back office support to help you succeed, really help you to stay in your sweet spot. Stay in your lane working with customers, working with carriers moving freight. Again, check them out at successspi3plcom Again, that's successspi3plcom to get connected with the guys over at SPI Logistics. All right time to get our show started.
Speaker 1:Our intro today I had to give a little shout out to Harry Potter. He's a wizard, because today on the show we have a wizard as well in the sales realm, so excited to have him on the show today. Been a little while since we've had him. Please welcome to the show. Good friend and the ceo and founder of journey will jenkins. Wow, incredible song buddy. You know we picked this one out just for you, man handpicked.
Speaker 2:I have a funny story about this song. Do tell, okay.
Speaker 2:So I wrestled in high school and my freshman year I'd never wrestled before ended up being on bar city, so I just got worked a lot not nice, I was getting worked and for any of our Chicago people, there's a school Montini Catholic that is just a factory for athletics, and so when I was in high school, they won a couple of national championships in wrestling and their team came out to the final countdown and our first dual meet against them. I think it was like my third or fourth match and I was like these dudes have nike outfits, they've got their banners and they come out and I'm like I'm about to get absolutely worked, like this is not gonna be good. I got worked.
Speaker 1:That's that Okay. So what's a better intro song, the final countdown or the mid-'80s and 90s Chicago Bulls entrance? Which one gives you the best vibes? Which one just?
Speaker 2:Man. So I got to go Bulls because Chicago. But those are electric introductions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when they did that whole thing, it changed the whole game. Nobody was doing that type of stuff. And then the whole thing just because the whole show was like just to be there for the intro, it was a big deal, man, that was huge. I remember when I was playing high school basketball our rivals Raytown high school I played at Raytown South, our rivals Raytown over in Kansas city. They had they didn't have the pep band playing like the traditional pep band playing. They had so much hip hop going. It was just awesome. I mean just everything that you can imagine out there was so good. So that was actually pretty tight to have Snoop Dogg and so many others that were out there. So good talk. All right, man, let's jump in and talk about this a little bit, because you've had some cool things going on. You started Journey, which is doing some great things on recruiting around sales training. What else are you doing? What else is going on? If there's an AI platform, maybe now I mean you've made some advances. Talk to us my friend Yep.
Speaker 2:So the two main services we provide are recruiting and training for brokerages, and what's interesting is the initial idea was to be able to create something so reps could go and become better at their job, and sales specifically.
Speaker 2:And as that's grown, we wanted to be able to have different areas where people could practice and take some of what they learned and see if they're effective at it, which is where the AI role playing tool came through. So I built a partnership with an organization that built sales training capability stuff around AI role playing, that build sales training capability stuff around AI role playing, and so we have a bunch of transportation manager style robots that act as if they work at a manufacturer or a steel company, a dairy company, all these different modes. We can customize them as much as we want, but the idea was sure, we can do one on one training, we can do some live stuff, we can do some asynchronous stuff, asynchronous stuff but if Trey can't go and role play and practice a warm call or an open call, opening call or discovery call probably not that effective to sharpen his skills. So that was just another kind of quiver that we wanted to add another element to the training platform.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I know which company you're talking about. You partner with phenomenal technology or anything like it. If it's the same one or not, it's cool. It's nice having that resource because it gives you feedback, it gives you scores, you can highlight keywords and just so many other things like that. So I think it's pretty powerful to have that just at your fingertips. I think that kind of e-training idea is really powerful and the technology is definitely better to do that. But you're not just doing just that portion of it, you're also doing some live training. Doing just that portion of it, you're also doing some live training.
Speaker 2:You have some webinars on LinkedIn, I believe, called Academy Live. Talk about that, yep. So the Academy is our B2C style training product, so we allow people to access courses that we built. They pay 30 bucks a month to access them. They can also be part of our community. I think that's the coolest part of the academy. So we have tons of supply chain professionals that network, ask questions, learn and develop, and then we do live sessions one to two times per month on a ton of different topics. So this week, tomorrow, we're doing one on how to manage an RFP cycle, and so the whole idea behind the academy is to make training accessible, and so we've got a part, a product that we sell to brokerages directly. They access our LMS, they access our training and they can build their own stuff inside of it. But, man, if you're sitting at a brokerage today and you want to upskill yourself, you're looking for a place to come and learn. Great group, and the live stuff actually ends up being the best training because people ask questions. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's really community. They're getting some of the AI training. They're getting that portion of it. They're getting the classes that you've created, kind of the videos that you've shot. Then they also get the live training, so it really just consistently keeps you connected with them and I love that. That's a great platform and a lot of companies don't have the resources to really have the sales training, which is a travesty, because to me that's the most important part of bringing people on is training them and making sure they continue to grow. Why do you think it is that companies don't invest in that which has created this gap in the marketplace that you're filling.
Speaker 2:I think it's common to feel like I don't have time or it's not that important. One of the two right, I don't have time, there's not someone to handle it. It's not that important. One of the two right, I don't have time, there's not someone to handle it, it's not that important, and it ends up being a massive problem with retention or getting people ramped up to be able to do their jobs well. I've been in that seat. I know what it's like to be building a business and you're spending all these different plates and you're like shoot, I hope they figure it out. But a lot of times that comes back to bite you because spending a little bit of time up front, slowing down to speed up ultimately allows you to have a more comprehensive, developed employee that is then happier with their role. They're able to go execute better. But a lot of times I just don't have time. I don't have time, I haven't invested the resources.
Speaker 1:But once you do it one time right you want to continue to iterate and make it better, but you got to start with something, and it's time often. So there's two school of thoughts here. I got to ask you which one you prefer. So my first sales job just got thrown in the deep end. Man, it was door to door, and I mean literally the first day that I was on the job I was out there doing some practice pitching. Within three days I was pitching customers for the very first time. I mean just totally out of my league, thrown in the deep end.
Speaker 1:My first professional sales job, though, with a company in our industry, trained me for an entire month before they let me get on the phones, and I have to say I ramped up very quickly with that company. So are you of the mindset of let's throw people in and just kind of let them figure it out along the way? Are you more of the mindset of let's train them for a long time, or some combination in between? What would you advise people if they were really building a sales program, sales training platform in their business?
Speaker 2:I think it's right in between so that you can start to see can someone pick up small tidbits of information? Do the job a little bit, come back and retrain. I'm a big fan of investing time early on, whether it's a full week, two weeks, four weeks, whatever it might be. Not a big fan of just throwing people in and saying, hey, go figure it out. That's not scalable from a training perspective.
Speaker 2:But if you can say, hey, trey, here's how you make cold calls, here's how you identify a good customer, here's our value proposition, here's how you work through your pipeline, here's emails, right, maybe that takes you five business days and each day you have a different topic and you go and do some practice cold calls. Then each day of the next week you might do a topic, put them on the phones, do a topic, put them on the phone. So it's micro training type stuff. But the least effective in my opinion it's just throwing people to the wolves and letting them go figure it out, because it's really tough. Sales is hard enough as is, but it's way harder if you didn't get any training.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's tough, yeah and I think unfortunately that's that's all too common is just throw them in or let them sit next to somebody and just kind of listen, hope that they just gather it by listening or being close to them. But I got to tell you, man, that it was weird when I started that job, I remember starting on January 9th and I did not hit the phone. So after Valentine's day I ramped up pretty quick after that point Cause I felt like I mean I had the CRM down, I had all the processes down, I had plenty of practice calls with my, with my trainer, my leader.
Speaker 2:I really I look back and value that, but, man, that is a luxury, it seems like it is.
Speaker 2:So when we were building out training, I spent the first three years setting up the team and figuring out what different resources we needed to get people comfortable with carrier sales, for example at Molo, and we invested early on in that first three to four weeks to get you proficient with the TMS and understanding what freight is and the lingo and spending time working through role playing and objections and all those things. And they put you on the phone, they put you through a small training process before you're equipped to go and do the job on your own. But then people ramp up successfully versus in the door, sit on the phones, go and do your thing. And replicating a same process on the customer-facing sales team, we saw a massive improvement where, yeah, you can go hire a rep that says they know what they're doing, but you need to be able to give them the right skills to go and perform and you put them through the same process to go out there and do it. It's way more effective.
Speaker 1:All right. So I got to ask you this question. You could have done anything after Molo. Obviously, you're really good at selling freight. Did the idea ever enter to do another freight brokerage? What led you to go? I think I want to train people and have more of that impact. What led you to that? You could have done anything, man, and been successful. I really believe that. First of all, I appreciate the support.
Speaker 2:So thank you. I had a non-compete that wasn't super long and so I wanted to be able to get a business up and rolling relatively quickly and I knew that recruiting would not violate my non-compete, and then shortly after that I'd be able to do some consulting and sales training type stuff. So I figured, hey, that's something that's going to be able to allow me to build a business that I enjoy and it's something that I think I'm very, very good at. I've done it for a long time, so it's not really like work. I enjoy coaching and helping sales reps and then helping execs as well.
Speaker 2:But I think there's a ton of opportunity in the space, and not that I couldn't go build another brokerage and see success doing that. But having done that one time successfully and been a part of other really, really large, successful organizations, I'll never say never. I won't say that I won't get back into it at some point, but I wanted to try something different that I hadn't done before, because the last time I did that it ended up being very successful. I'd never built a freight brokerage and been involved from day one kind of scaling and building an organization and we had a successful exit and that worked out well. So I was like, man, let's go ahead and see how we can do this, and so far it's been great.
Speaker 1:So so there's. So you're saying there's a chance that someday we may see Will Jenkins back in the freight brokerage seat. It's possible.
Speaker 2:You know, I think it is better to keep options open and a lot of times absolutes.
Speaker 1:you know like I'm never going to do that.
Speaker 2:You know you don't know right. Things change. There's opportunities out there, so we'll see. But I do enjoy what I do currently and I think there's an opportunity to build a really large, successful, sustainable business, which is different. We have more of a SaaS model in the training side, which is the first SaaS-style business I've built so far. It's been really cool, but still it's time to learn about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, man. Okay, so I want to switch gears for a second, all right, so you're really working with the sales reps the ones that are on the floor, that are making the calls, that are sending emails, that are closing the deals. Let's talk sales leadership for a moment. I want to get your take on this real quick, because I got some thoughts around this from my career. When you think about what makes someone a great sales leader, what are some of those characteristics you look for? And the reason I'm asking you this is because I think a lot of founders, a lot of CEOs, a lot of C-level executives, I think, they struggle sometimes with identifying the next or the best sales leader for their organization. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:The first thing I would look for would be someone that can connect with people, because sales is much more than just lining up opportunities and knocking them down. There's a lot of people that can do that and they are awful leaders. They're incredible individual contributors. Lone wolves go out there and do their thing, build a big book, ask them to go lead a team, and that team will be ineffective. So can you connect and lead people? And what does that mean? It means inspire people. It means be able to build relationships and understand man. That person didn't come to the office or they're not feeling good today, but can I identify what that challenge might be so I can connect with them and be able to help pivot and get them to where they want to be, because I've spent time learning who they are as a person. People are way more willing to work hard, especially in an industry like ours, when they know that people that are behind them actually support and care about them. So the first thing is can you connect with people? One A after that is the ability to communicate what the expectations are and how you get there. So I can tell you hey, our goal is to get to $100 million in top line revenue this year, right, fantastic. What's my expectation? What am I contributing to that? And then, how do you expect me to get there? You want me to expand my current accounts. Do you want me to land net new? Do you want me to eventually grow to be a sales leader? How am I supposed to go make that happen? What are the best customers to call on?
Speaker 2:So if your leaders aren't able to identify the goals, expectations, communicate that transparently, it's really really tough for people to go and do their jobs. And the other part is you do need to be a proficient seller, right, so you need to have the ability to command a room, be able to walk in and get business. There are going to be tons of opportunities that you need to be roped into. A rep might not be able to move some across the finish line and they need a little bit of executive presence to get that bad boy closed. Well, you better be ready to rumble, right. My expectation might not be. I need you to carry your book, but I need you making sure that opportunities are getting across the finish line, and if you don't know how to sell, that's not going to work. Not that every leader needs to be the A plus rockstar killer seller, but you need to be effective and to be able to convert, because you're going to get tapped in and if you don't know how to close, it's a problem.
Speaker 1:Man. I could not agree more with that. I'm so excited that you shared that. I like to think of sales leaders like I think of, for example, nba basketball coaches, and when you think about the best coaches that the league has had, it's usually somebody who's a former player, but they weren't the best player. Steve Kerr, good player he wasn't the best player on the Bulls, right, I mean Bill Jackson, good player. New York Knicks back in the day, not the best Great coach.
Speaker 1:You look at some of these people that are the best coaches. They show they can do it. It's like you said the proficiency is there, but there's something different about them. There's a reason why Michael Jordan would probably never be a great coach. Magic johnson not a great coach. Kobe bryant probably not a girl. He might be an exception. He might have actually been a great coach. Larry bird questionable as a great coach, but phenomenal players. I think that your top person could be a good leader, but I think it's unlikely. I think the the best leader, if you're looking for the new leader, is probably like your number three or number four person, because they're good, but they're probably the ones helping out. They're probably the ones that are helping new people, they're thinking of others, they're connecting. It's usually not that top sales guy, but why do organizations do that? Why do they?
Speaker 2:take their top guy and promote him. The window dressing looks good. It's easy to say you know, top seller, they'd be a great manager. Oftentimes it's not the case and a lot of times they just want to contribute at their own clip and be responsible for themselves, and so that's okay. You think about just the Pareto principle 80% of the people, 20% of the people, do 80% of the work. If you work through that in most businesses, what if you look at it by accounts or by sales rep revenue like that? Just it plays out that way right. So this is I don't even consider it a hot take, but that 20% would probably be good at any organization. It's not you that made them good.
Speaker 2:They are just really really talented people, yeah, man, and they happen to work for your business and you better keep them, cause they're really good at what they do. The other part can you move that up from a C to a B or a B plus, like that's what a really really good coach does, right? You enable your A plus sellers, you get all the stuff out of their way, you make their job as easy as possible, you get the best opportunities there for them. They've earned the right they perform, they're good team players, but you got to get stuff out of their way. They're going to win anyway, but make it easier, but make it easier. And then you've got people that want to learn. If you're not willing to invest in them as a coach, to get them from a C plus to a B or a B to an A. The middle part is what moves the needle outside of your killers? That would be killers anyway. So if you can do that, make sure you have a good coach, and that's a lot of times where that gap is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you get the Steve Kerrs and the Judd Bushlers to be contributors and to play their role. You know it's a good deal. And here's something else. I think it's two things. One, I think it's easy for leaders just to promote their top person and think that it's just going to be a smooth fit. I think that's just a common misperception that leaders have, and not to say that your top sales rep can't be a great leader. It's just not that common. What makes them a great salesperson often does not make them a great leader. But what I think is also true is that we have unfortunately given top sales producers this picture that leadership is what they actually want. Right, and I don't think they do. I think they want to be out there killing it. Because you think about it, steve Kerr doesn't get to shoot any more shots, steph Curry's shooting the shots, and great leaders know that to be a great leader means you stop taking the shots. You help other people become a better shooter.
Speaker 2:The thing that's interesting about taking someone that is proficient at the role. Let's say you've got A B C, d right, you've got a B B plus player. They didn't come in the best but they worked really hard to understand the value proposition in the process. It's like the kid that comes on and isn't a scholarship player, earns a scholarship, plays on special teams a little bit, gets some shine not the star but does their thing to contribute. You're like man. I respect that. They had to take something they weren't good at and learn how to become good, versus someone that came in the door good and then had to hone some industry proficiency. Those are two different use cases for just consuming information. So which one do you think is probably going to be better at teaching people how to get good at the job? Probably a person that wasn't good and then became good.
Speaker 1:It's just two different things. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that there has to be something where we start to communicate to leaders what they're looking for in a new sales leader you know, corporate executives and we have to. Also, I think, think, about how we're compensating the top sales rep. So here's a, here's a hot take. I think one of the reasons why sales top sales producers want to become leaders is because they can make more money as a leader, and I actually think that's a fallacy that business runs because think about basketball Kobe Bryant's going to make more than Phil Jackson. We have it reversed, where the sales leader often makes more than the top sales producer. Do you think that it should be that a top sales producer should make more than the sales leader? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:How often does that?
Speaker 1:happen in organizations.
Speaker 2:I would say an organization that I've seen is very common. I see it more common in most of the organizations we do work with today and organizations I've been a part of. I think it's backwards if it's the other way. If a rep is bringing in net new business and growing and contributing to the organization's success, they should be paid as such, 100%, and there's always a cap to what you can pay management and leadership based on what they're producing, because it's a team that's leading the boat. So you're going to have a higher salary and a bonus structure of some sort based on goals and things of that nature, but the earning potential is very different.
Speaker 1:And it should be. That's the number one way to mitigate this problem is to make sure that your top salespeople are able to make a lot of money and kill it, Because if they become into leadership, they should take a step back and they should not want to do that unless they really want to be a leader Like I think that solves the problem.
Speaker 2:So organizations that are paying the sales leader more than the top sales rep. To me that's the problem Absolutely. There's not an incentive to keep closing business if you're not getting paid for it.
Speaker 1:It's crazy, right, there's an incentive to become a leader and then they probably aren't going to be able to do things that actually make them happy.
Speaker 2:Absolutely not Got to go backwards.
Speaker 1:I'm glad we had that conversation, man, I want to get your take on that because I know you've been around the block and you've seen a lot of things and I just see that happening. I just go. Man, the person who's going to be the best leader is not always the best producer, because what makes them a great producer often doesn't make them good with other people. So totally good stuff, man, hot takes. I love that Good stuff.
Speaker 1:All right, I got to ask you about one more thing before we hop in and have just a little bit of fun today on the show. So you posted recently. I love this. You posted as an athlete, I love this. The pain of regret or the pain of discomfort while we grow, man, I'll tell you what I think. Way too many of us, myself included, we get in this comfort mode in life, especially as we get older. We just want comfort and we stop growing in so many different areas of our life. And talk about why you put that on there and how that impacts you. I know you're somebody who doesn't mind getting a little pain in there from time to time.
Speaker 2:Totally. I think it's important to recenter on that, because the first time you go and do something, you're typically not very good at it and you have to be comfortable with that part that sucks to become good at it. And so in this business now I battle that every day, right, I've never built commercially available training at scale. I've built training that we used internally. I've coached and developed tons of reps. You get feedback and see how they're doing and the business grows. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:But I've never done that for other organizations or done it for individuals that are like hey, we want to be a part of your sales bootcamp, for example. So we did a Q&A on our sales bootcamp. It's the live training that we're running September 10th, 11th and 12th, and so I've got to put our curriculum out there and I'm under a microscope by executives, owners, sales leaders. Is this good enough? They don't like that part, and that's just part of the game, right, like, I don't love it because I feel comfortable and confident in what we've built, but that doesn't mean that everybody's going to like it, and that's uncomfortable. That's just part of the game, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think that too often we just shy away from that. I'm guilty of that. I love watching people who build in public because they're not afraid just to hear the feedback and the scrutiny and and kind of let people in. But I think there's so much value in that as well and I've just been thinking about that a lot with uh, like my health, do you mean we get older?
Speaker 2:it sucks you gotta be intentional man.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid man I'd have like a totino's pizza and some cheese dip and a coke and go play basketball.
Speaker 2:That sounds incredible, probably put on 30, 30 and 30 and 10 kids going crazy didn't even matter man't even matter.
Speaker 1:Man, it felt so good and man, now it's like it doesn't work. Man, I'm eating broccoli and trying to change up what I'm doing. You just have to be so intentional about being comfortable and continuing to grow and put yourself out there. And now I see my kids doing that, my daughter's doing that, those types of things. It's really powerful, man.
Speaker 2:I think people, the life's not about comfort, man. The moment you start to slip into comfort mode, you're done. I'll tell you that for our business. Today I feel good about where we are. We have a lot of work to do, but anytime I am too comfortable. Our business is not growing as it should be. There are two distinct things that we do. We help train people, we have training. That's asynchronous and we do live training, the bootcamp and some consulting stuff, stuff. And then we do recruiting. But if I get too comfortable and I'm not engaged at pushing all that stuff forward, we're not going where we need to be and it's a it's a reality check every day yeah, yeah, the moment you get into comfort mode, man, I think it's just the beginning of the end.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's true for civilizations you think about, like roman empire man, like they had it going on, they had it going on. And then I'm obsessed, obsessed. Are you a history buff, you like?
Speaker 2:you like, learn about roman empire. I do, man, it's just so fascinating, and I've been. I travel quite a lot, I've been to rome before and it's just like eye-opening. But, agree, right, you get comfortable, you think everything's good. It's not. I mean, they were running the show for a long time then you had, you know, the great britain and england.
Speaker 1:They were running the show for a long time. Then you had the Great Britain and England. They were running the show for a while. Now they're not really running the show we are, but I just wonder where we're at on that scale as Americans. That's a whole other issue and a whole other topic. You think about that. You get out of comfort, you start to grow, you stay in comfort, you're going downhill. We got to pause for a second. I have a little random question of the day for you. I just like to have a little fun on the show, as you know. All right, this one's kind of an interesting one. Man, I'm not sure what you think about this one. If your life were a movie, all right, what genre would it be and who would play you?
Speaker 2:Let's start with the genre. What genre would a movie be? If your life were a movie, where'd you go with what? What are we considering genres? Right, because I'm a big comedy. Okay, I'm a big comedy guy okay drama murder miss, like you know, I think it would be probably, I don't know like a sports documentary style you think about, like Netflix receiver quarterback or like that kind of style, and then only because of looks. I don't know if you remember Corbin Blue from High School Musical yeah so I have long curly hair.
Speaker 2:I don't really have a lot of other actors that I think kind of you have the long curly hair and look so like probably, probably that not that he's. He's a good actor, but you know he's not like denzel or something like that. But you know, I actually I like that pick.
Speaker 1:I'm down with that pick. First of all, I love documentaries, like receiver's been really good, I've enjoyed watching that. Quarterback was great. I can't wait for the next one to come out. I really love watching documentaries and or docudramas about real things that happen. I'm not really into the fiction type stuff. I like listening and watching nonfiction stuff, that's for sure. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:Man, yeah, corbin Blue, that's an interesting pick because if I could switch places with any one person in life right now, it'd be Zac Efron, so we could do a little something. Man, we could. We'd have a little high school musical going on or something like that. I think we could pull that off. That's wild. I mean, I like to sing, I play golf, I play basketball. It's my dude, my dude, yeah, so I would, I would switch, I would switch with him in a heartbeat and and go. That'd be Troy Bolton in a heartbeat. But anyways, all right, that's a lot of fun, all right. So let's finish up with this. You said you have a live in-person training. It's like a workshop, is that in Chicago A couple of days since September? Talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yep, so it is virtual but it's live. So we're hosting a virtual training September 10th, 11th, 12th called the Journey Sales Bootcamp, and this really spawned out of us doing consulting with current clients where we help coach executives and individual leaders how to build their books or how to structure their sales teams. We had so many of them say, hey, this could be valuable to the market if you did an actual intensive bootcamp. And when we first launched Journey, my idea was maybe we do some cohort style live training and zoom and then see the results and kind of iterate from there. We've gotten an incredible response.
Speaker 2:We have a couple of spots left so we're keeping it to 10 total seats. So there'll be 10 attendees. I'll be running the training. We'll teach reps everything from how to cold call, write good emails, how to role play, run a formal sales call. Everyone that's part of it will get a one-on-one with me for 30 minutes after the bootcamp and they'll have access to the AI role playing tool for a month. But it's intense Three days, three hours a day, just really locked in learning how to build a book of business, and we want it to be engaging. So we're capping it at 10 people, super excited to see how it goes, and if it's successful, then we'll continue to run these for months to come after this.
Speaker 1:When it's successful. My friend, I have no doubt it's going to be successful. That's cool, man Football season starting up, having a little bootcamp, a little two-a-day activity, oh yeah, Having a good time. That's awesome, man. I'm excited to see that. I got to ask you this question about sales. You're a big sales guy, but you're also a big marketing guy. What is your view on the connection between sales and marketing? When you're talking to people about sales, how much do you bring in the marketing aspect of it? Because the lines have really blurred in the last 10 years, especially with social media.
Speaker 2:So I love this question because we do quite a lot of this with our clients today and I think they are very, very symbiotic. They need to work hand in hand for your organization to be successful. I think there's layers to it, though. So if I am a green brand new customer facing sales rep, I probably don't have the market reach and the expertise to influence anyone to buy from me through my personal brand yet I can over time. But today, day one, fresh broker seller, but nobody's paying attention to what you're saying on LinkedIn and they're not going to choose you as their next enterprise. You're not going to get Coca-Cola to choose you because you posted on LinkedIn three times yet Not yet Right.
Speaker 2:So a lot of times we're teaching people how to comment to their own voice, like who are, do you care about what? Do you want to talk about this on the individual side and then also use that as a way to build your book of business outbound, because you need to be selling outbound and putting out content so people know who you are and become comfortable with you. In the beginning, you won't have any recognition. It takes time to get to where you want to be, but the other side of it is at the executive and ownership level of the broker.
Speaker 2:So if you're teaching your reps to cold call, outbound and develop and send emails and go to conferences and all this stuff, it doesn't matter if the people don't know who they are in the organization they represent, because they're making buying decisions 24, seven, all day, every day. They're selecting providers, vendors, for all these different things. They're swapping out transportation providers, right. And if they don't know who Trey is and Trey sends that email or bumps into him at a conference, they're like bro, I don't know who you are, thank you, but I have some other people that I'm aware of. And so at the executive and ownership level, there needs to be a very focused effort, outbound and just general marketing wise, so people become comfortable with who you are and they become you become synonymous with that buying decision. So, oh, trey does this. When we think about this, we'll consider. But if I don't have that effort and I'm not putting out video content, marketing content, graphics, I'm at conferences, I'm doing all this stuff, good luck.
Speaker 1:Good luck, man. I couldn't have said that any better. I mean, there's really two parts to it the corporate side of it. You have to get brand equity, you have to get the messaging out there. You have to start to do that, and each individual sales rep needs to be doing that as well, because personal branding is powerful Building. Each individual sales rep needs to be doing that as well, because personal branding is powerful. Building trust is so powerful. It used to be that it was just corporate brand and then you would call and say I'm from so-and-so and hopefully there'd be enough there that they'd take the call. But now you can get both and it's really powerful to do that. I heard somebody say this recently and I agree with it. There is never a sale that happens in which marketing at some level does not occur. Some form of marketing has to occur for a sale to even happen.
Speaker 2:We got our first inbound lead from YouTube four weeks ago. First of all, I'm a big proponent of doing the work up front and then seeing what you can generate if you're willing to put yourself out there. I wasn't even considering YouTube as an avenue where we would get inbound. I just thought it would make sense that we're posting on TikTok and all these other places. Our podcasts are on Spotify, so put them on YouTube. Got inbound lead converted to a customer. I'm like this is sick, but if we weren't there that wouldn't have happened. And it is focused between the team building their brand. I build my brand journey brand and it gets us a ton. I couldn't even begin to quantify the revenue we produce and how much of it comes inbound. I'd be willing to bet 90% of our revenue is inbound. I'd be willing to bet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is the hard part, this is where people struggle, because direct attribution and marketing is difficult. Why did they come to you? Was it your podcast? Was it YouTube channel? Was it something you said on LinkedIn? Was it? They saw you at a conference. All of those things work together and in doing so, then they come to you and they say, hey, I want to know more about what you're doing. So this is where I think people struggle, because executives want to know ROI on the emails I sent. What's the ROI I got? It's a great question. This is hard, this is difficult to do, because maybe it was the email, maybe it was the conference, maybe it was what they saw on a podcast or on a social media post. All of it works together and, to me, marketing is one of those fundamentals that too many companies give up on in their sales efforts. They just give up on it and I hate that Because it makes your job harder as a salesperson.
Speaker 2:It makes it way harder. The other thing that's interesting is you don't even need to spend a ton of money to do it. You need to have someone that's slightly creative to do some static graphics and maybe edit a couple of videos. That could be internal. You could hire somebody externally to do it in a fractional capacity. We're not talking tons of time. Stay on top of trends.
Speaker 2:Stay on top of what's happening be consistent, simple stuff, and then someone on the team ideally executive or ownership level needs to own strategy. Here's the things that we post about, here's the trends that we think align with our business and our values. And you got to go do it. You have to go do it. And most organizations, they just don't focus on making it a reality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's 100% true. Hey, speaking of events coming up, we have the Broker Carrier Summit down in Fort Worth, texas, october 23 through 25. Really excited about this, man. This is an interesting event. Man, brokers and carriers in the same room. Tell them the problems, what's going on, what they hate about each other. It's really interesting, but the relationships are great. Able to find like-minded partners. Good stuff down there. Are we going to see you in Texas, man? Are you going to come hang out with us?
Speaker 2:I've got some stuff lined up for October. I may be out of the country, but if I'm in the country I will be there.
Speaker 1:Sneak on over man. We've got a golf tournament too. That's going to be killer dude. It's a phenomenal two.
Speaker 2:It was great, so I appreciate y'all putting that on. It's always a really good, really good event.
Speaker 1:Trying to do something different, man, trying to do something different and valuable, those two things, those are the two keywords we're trying to do, trying to find a way to, as the show puts it, stand out a little bit.
Speaker 1:Will Jenkins man great to have you on the show, man. Thank you, I appreciate you, man. Have a good one. All right, everybody, make sure you come back every Tuesday for another episode just like this, with great guests like Will Jenkins. And also, here's your sales and marketing tip of the day. When it comes to messaging, it's all about knowing your audience and knowing their problems. You got to talk about the problems. The moment you stop talking about the problems is usually when you lose the engagement with the audience.
Speaker 1:It's why, cable networks do so well. They constantly talk about problems. They don't talk solutions so much. That's where it's different with sales and marketing. Talk about the problems, offer your solution. If it solves that problem and I guarantee your engagement will go up. Thanks again to our sponsor, SPI Logistics, for being a part of the show. We appreciate them. Check them out at successspi3plcom and do sign up for the Broker Carrier Summit. You can go to brokercarriersummitcom and sign up today. Use coupon code BETA B-E-T-A for 10% off. And again, one more thank you to our listeners over at Reads Across America Radio. We appreciate them and that sponsorship. Check them out at readsacrossamericaorg and sponsor today. And until next time, don't forget friends, stop standing still. Start standing up. We'll see you soon.
